Once Again about Archaisms in Modern Greek Dialects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.214Abstract
Modern Greek identity is heavily based on the idea of the continuity of Greek culture and the Greek language. Most specialists in Modern Greek regard Ancient Greek and Modern Greek as different stages of the same language despite multiple differences and innovations at all levels. During the 19th century, a number of European classical philologists tried to find Ancient Greek features in Modern Greek dialects. As a result, they have singled out Tsakonian as the sole dialect which descends directly from Ancient Doric Laconian but not from Hellenistic Koiné as the rest of the modern dialects. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that Tsakonian is not the only Modern Greek variety with some unique peculiarities inherited from Ancient Greek. This contribution analyzes the phenomena of the Ancient Greek origin in vocabulary, phonetics, morphology and syntax in Modern Greek dialects. The research is focused on those archaisms which exist in the dialects but are absent from Standard Modern Greek. The data was mostly collected by the author of this paper and his colleagues between 2000 and 2023. The analysis demonstrates that the majority of unique peculiarities of the Ancient Greek origin are found in Pontic and Tsakonian, although most varieties of Modern Greek have some archaisms. However, the quantity of archaisms is not a consistent indicator of the antiquity of the dialect since the history of Modern Greek dialects is still terra incognita and there is no good explanation why some dialects keep their archaisms better than the others.
Keywords:
Modern Greek dialects, lexical archaisms, phonetic archaisms, morphological archaisms, syntactic archaisms
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Published
2023-12-30
How to Cite
Kisilier, M. L. (2023). Once Again about Archaisms in Modern Greek Dialects. Philologia Classica, 18(2), 339–359. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.214
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